Please read & share to your friends The tradition of eating mooncakes during the festival began in Yuan Dynasty. At the end of Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368, a dynasty ruled by the Mongols), the Han people’s army wanted to overthrow the rule of the Mongols, so they planed an uprising, but they had no way to inform every Han who wanted to join them of the time of the uprising without being discovered by the Mongols. One day, the military counselor of the Han people’s army, Liu Bowen, thought out a stratagem related to mooncakes. Liu Bowen asked his soldiers to spread the rumor that there would be a serious disease in winter and eating mooncakes was the only way to cure the disease, then he asked soldiers to write "uprising, at the night of Mid-Autumn Festival" on papers and put them into mooncakes then sell them to common Han people. When the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival came a huge uprising broke out. Another story goes like this: Once upon a time in ancient China, ten suns hung in the sky. The heat of the suns caused a drought and the harvest began to shrivel up. The emperor of China asked his master archer, Hou Yi, to shoot down all but one of the ten suns. Hou Yi climbed to the top of Kunlun Mountain, shooting down nine suns. The grateful emperor presented him with a pill that would grant him immortality. However, Hou Yi had a beautiful wife, Chang’e, and he did not wish to become immortal without her. After Hou Yi was acclaimed as a hero, he stashed away the pill in a secret place. Feng Meng, a student of Hou Yi’s, discovered the existence of the pill. One day, when Hou Yi was away, Feng Meng tried to force Chang’e to give him the pill. Instead, Chang’e swallowed the pill herself, and she flew up into the moon and became immortal. Missing his beloved wife, Hou Yi burned incense and food offerings, and the practice spread throughout China. It is said that during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chang’e and Hou Yi are reunited—which is why Mid-Autumn Festival is also an important day for families to come together. During Mid-Autumn Festival, people traditionally eat mooncakes and look at the full moon. Mooncakes themselves have an interesting history behind them. Stay tuned for more—we’ll have a post dedicated just to mooncakes, the Chinese pastry that everyone loves to hate!
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:00:04 +0000
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